Before dawn I woke. I put on my thickest boots and my warmest cloak, and pulled my hood over my head. Outside, it was almost totally dark. I climbed the rocky slope behind the houses, visited the toilet house, then went on up the ridge. I heard noises in the rubbish ravine, and knew the wolves were there. They often came to the town at night to scavenge for food. Their eyes glowed at me like green fires, but they did not follow me.

I went over the ridge and down into the valley on the other side. The sky was a shade lighter now, and I could make out the form of the mountains all around. Mist swirled about me, clinging to my clothes, and settled on my hair and skin like rain. It was freezing. My breath was vaporous, and my boots crunched on the icy soil.

I stood with my hands pushed deep into my sleeves, and faced the length of the valley. I could hear the river on my left, tumbling and gurgling between the rocks, and shrouded with heavy mist. Rocks stood like spectres in the gloom, silent sentinels to the dawn. Our dawns were never lovely, then. They were dull and cold, and grey lightened on grey till it was morning. And all the day was grey, until the blackness of the night.

But this dawn for me was different. This dawn was a beginning – or an end – for me.

Shaking with fear and cold, I bent and unbound my boots. The ground had ice on it, but it seemed important to me to have my skin on stone, my flesh against the earth. I stood up again, straight, and closed my eyes.

Guilt-ridden thoughts clamoured in my head. Who did I think I was – some kind of female diviner? For a few moments I was appalled, horrified at my audacity, my mad arrogance. How dare I trespass on his ground, his territory? How dare I even think I had the power, let alone the right?

I closed my mind to the voices, to reason and doubt and guilt, and I thought of my woman-stone. I held it there in fiery light in the centre of my mind, felt its texture and form, the warmth and singing power of it. And then I seemed to see, far in a distant place, another image of my stone. But the image was not real … it was more the feeling of an image, the vibration of one. And that other image called to me. And then I knew – I knew – where my firestone lay.

But the knowing was a changing thing, strong and sure one moment, then faint the next, and I had to listen, search for it with everything in me. But always it was there. Like the shadow of a flying bird, it passed vivid on the ground one moment, distinct and unmistakable – and then it shrank, glimmering and faint, and was almost lost. Then it would flash up again, unerring and swift. And I followed it, running when it ran, walking when it slowed, not looking with my eyes, but with my heart and mind and soul. And then, suddenly, it stopped.